Cloudof Knowing

The Cloud of Knowing content analytics and the future of market research John Griffiths Planning Above and Beyond Jan 20 th

Ground I am going to cover
Work in progress from Cloud of Knowing project
Paper for the Market Research Society conference
Online content – how it can be part of MR
MR stuck using offline research paradigms
Will introduce 2 new approaches
A way to bring content into research

The questions we need answers to
Is sampling central to research or does research have to change?
If we don’t ask questions is it still research?
Do we need permission to use people’s content?
Do we need to protect anonymity?
How can research use internet content for business decision support?
Is there such a thing as real time research?

Redrawing the lines around research Will research advance to include content? Or will research retreat and become a specialism? the guys who do Interviews..

Research cultures
Farmer/cultivators
Hunter gatherers
Scavengers


Blog site

Scavenging on the web
But it is only one blogger even with comments from others
Who is the blogger? Where are they based?
Are they representative? All internet posters are atypical
That person may be misrepresenting themselves – corporate blogging/PR

Current resources to analyse online content
Social media measurement experiments - eg #measurementcamp
Netnography – online behaviour and content coming from this
E-Anthropology –social analysis using web artefacts
Bricolage – support to qualitative research
Research practice says
research data needs to come from a valid sample representative of the population
If projective materials are used then research participants need to explain it

So can online research help? Online survey panels Online focus groups Face to face/CATI surveys Offline discussion/ Focus groups Research Communities { } { } Open platforms Eg FB group

Business decision support using more and more data sources
Business process
Web analytics
Customer satisfaction
Corporate reputation tracking
Transaction data
Customer research?
A lot of these aren’t being managed by the marketing department

Research at the crossroads

Purefold: open source co-created transmedia film director story ‘ seeds’ RSS feeds gather raw content Friendfeed hopper Visitors /linkers grade and link to other Web content storylines amplified Brand owners sponsor & create characters storylines Output put into production Ridley Scott Assoc/Ag 8

Purefold model applied to research

Benefits of the Purefold model
Continues to use real people as participants
Dual role of research participants as graders and taggers
Sampling of participants can be controlled
Content can be filtered and amplified

Demographic replicators: Research bots ‘ Wefeelfine’ emotional wrapper DGR Felix text bot twitter posterous friendfeed network Analysis of others who share bot tastes Comments/ retweets of those who dialogue with the bot Findings aggregated with other bots

Meet felix
Emotional wrapper: wefeelfine.org:8080/ ShowFeelings?feeling&limit=50 gender=M city=london agerange=20
emotion_keywords: { sad: [divorce, desk], great: [Floyd, Doors], depressed: [sales, weight, divorce, client], lonely: [at home, the divorce, miss my kids, desk], tired: [work, boss, home, hangover, sales]
# Times of day time_keywords: 04: [work, sales, weight, conference, procurement, desk]
weekend_time_keywords: { 10: [home, kids],
# Words to fall back on if nothing else matches, or to add randomly character_keywords: [work, boss, divorce, fat]

What is Felix? A projective device for researchers to reframe research questions? A dynamic sample/panel which can be observed and with which the researcher can interact A lure/decoy for drawing out customer response

Benefits of Replicators
Continues to use real people as participants
You don’t need to recruit research participants unless you want to
Sampling of participants can be controlled
Content is filtered and amplified
Content can be used to stimulate online response
Content can be used to inspire the researcher as analyst

Past the sample/content bottleneck Sample Content Quant & Qual research keep sample and content questions separate Inability to control sample is what makes web content analysis problematic Sampling is literal: 20 male, works in local govt, lives in London

Computing has a similar bottleneck Instructions/data Memory/CPU

Knitting machines.. two different media programme cards wool

Into the cloud..
Sampling
Permission
Anonymity

Sampling
Probabilistic scoring has been standard in lifestyle database marketing and geo-demographic marketing for 20 years
Use sample and content tags to mark up data. Could use cookies as a type of sample tag.
Use scoring models to decide whether to include content within sample.
Use best fit algorithms to aggregate content and sample tags.
Identify content first and then use sample tags to eliminate all the content which is off sample.
this starts to make available to us the riches of the web in realtime search engines and Google/Yahoo alerts

Permission
If we source content probabilistically then permission is no longer an issue
We can use their content without ever disturbing them.
Is this permissible within research or not?
The volume of online content that could become the subject of research is potentially so great that data protection becomes meaningless – permission becomes unnecessary

Anonymity
MR principle protects research respondents from being sold to
Anonymity can only be granted in the context of a customer interview. There is always a possibility with behavioural targeting that that the digital marketer knows something about you that you don’t.
Probabilistic systems already being used for behavioural targeting and direct marketing would identify them anyway but there would not be greater disadvantage than anyone else who is the subject of behavioural targeting.

To summarise
To bring content within research – need new methods
Purefold co-creation using taggers and graders
Use of DGR research bots
Probabilistic sampling
Challenge the use of permission and the protection of anonymity

Vested interest in MR preventing the incorporation of online content Qual: Research by hand Quant: Self measurement

CRM the natural starting point
The need to engagement means that CRM is no longer focussed on hard sell
Multiple contact points with customers – very few falling within conventional research practice
The natural starting point for analysing web content.
Research needs to be part of it

Final thought? Customers are tribal stakeholders an extension of the company
Perhaps customers willing to be involved in regular dialogue as part of CRM programmes
Customers as valued stakeholders
Extended members of the company ‘tribe’
Is it possible that research industry is perpetuating the divide:
Research respondents as outsiders?
Researchers as essential intermediaries?

Thank you .. Questions??

Some references you may find useful..
http://www.webjam.com/cloud_of_knowing
http://www.research-live.com/events/annual-conference/research-2010-the-annual-conference/4000799.article
http://www.ag8.com/ purefold
http://felixfreeman.posterous.com/
http://twitter.com/felix_freeman
[email_address]
johngriffiths7 twitter

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Cloudof Knowing

by John Griffiths on Jan 20, 2010

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Cloudof Knowing — Presentation Transcript